


Homecoming

by blueincandescence



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-11 20:37:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20159740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueincandescence/pseuds/blueincandescence
Summary: WonderTrev Week Day 4 Fanfic Prompt: DomesticitySummary: When Steve arrives unexpectedly to 1984, Diana takes him home. If you can call it that.





	Homecoming

Nowhere else to go, Diana brings Steve to the apartment ARGUS lent her. Homebase, the head officer called it. It feels as foreign to Diana as it must to Steve. Stark white. High ceilings. Steve looks up and around, his hands propped on the belt of his fanny pack.

Diana gestures. “It’s very modern. All the latest—” The bareness of the room makes her falter. “Everything.” Her rooms growing up had always been tidy but full of treasures. Woven blankets and blown glass figurines and weapons hidden from her mother, as cared for as any of her dolls or books.

Steve picks up a hardcover from the glass coffee table and thumbs through it. Sword to her throat, Diana couldn’t have come up with the title. ARGUS enjoys their props—of which, Diana has come to understand, she is a favorite.

Diana crosses to open the balcony doors. Sheer curtains lay flat and still in the humidity. “In springtime, there’s a breeze from the river. Autumn, too, they tell me. I haven’t been here long.” She doesn’t know why she is apologizing. What precisely she is apologizing for.

The smile Steve gives crinkles his eyes, but his curved lips are pressed. He must have so many questions. He keeps them to himself.

While Steve does a circuit of the kitchen, touching dials and spinning knobs, Diana makes a phone call. Secured line, seven layers of code. She gives her account of the incident and the presence of a World War I veteran presumed dead sixty-six years ago. The clipped edge to her voice catches Steve’s ear. Diana stretches the phone cord around the wall separating the kitchen and the hallway and makes her briefing even briefer.

She glares into the living room. “It’s all wrong,” she tells her ARGUS contact. She means the attack, the motive they’re dreaming up, but also this place. If Diana had it to do again, if she’d taken an interest, she would have chosen a brownstone. Something turn of the century, half a century of renovations under its roof with mismatched furniture and a wall of books. Things she could point to as a clear line from Steve’s time to this one.

Diana disconnects the call. The cord vibrates. Steve is sheepish, caught in the act of plucking it. Diana hands him the receiver. “Press all the buttons you like.”

Clearing his throat, Steve instead places the receiver back in the cradle and takes his tour of the 1980s to the hall. He hangs onto the doorframe as he dips his whole body into the bathroom. He looks back at Diana, his lifted eyebrows a sweet complement to his awe-tousled hair. Steve points in the general direction of the toilet. Diana nods.

Diana retreats to the sofa to blow out a breath. There is so much she should be doing. So much she doesn’t understand.

_Dear Etta,_ Diana narrates in her head, a habit she’d held onto for decades. _I found Steve Trevor in the mall today. He remains as miraculous as ever._

“Lots of art.”

Steve’s voice startles Diana to her feet. “Excuse me?”

“Sor—” They’d exchanged so few words he needs to clear his throat. “Sorry. Lots of, uh, art.” Steve points backward with his thumb toward the cluster of Georgia O'Keeffes peeking out of her open bedroom door.

“Those are mine,” Diana says brightly, grateful to have something. Diana ushers Steve to stand in front of the paintings. “Aren’t they wonderful?”

“They certainly are, ah, evocative,” Steve says, eyes crinkled. He inclines toward her, almost close enough to press foreheads. “Clio would have liked them.”

Diana laughs. “Well, you know how I feel about censorship in art.”

Steve’s hesitation is a palpable thing.

“The National Gallery. Remember? You would like it even better now. No figleaves. So fortunate they rebuilt after the air raids.”

“Air raids?”

Too late, Diana recognizes Steve’s expression has slid from confusion to alarm. “Not our war,” Diana reassures him. “The one after.”

Steve looks down at his shoes. His toes flex beneath the white leather.

Diana slides her hands into her trouser pockets to keep from pressing them through the wall. “Etta took me to the National Gallery,” she states, unnecessarily. Not Steve. He had taken her to Selfridge Department Store, Westminster, Paddington Station. To the pub where she would meet with their friends every Armistice Day for forty years.

There was a time when Diana could have recalled each minute she spent with Steve Trevor in perfect clarity. The years had not blurred the memories. Diana had. Counting minutes only proved Steve right. They hadn’t had enough time.

The bright colors of dear Georgia’s work blur at the edges. How many more minutes had Steve’s return bought them?

And at what cost?

Beside Diana, Steve holds himself still, but she can sense his eyes moving to her nightstand. In it, he would have found a watch she can’t bear to return, not until she knows—more. What Steve is looking for is not on her nightstand or her dresser or her walls. He’s looking, Diana realizes, for something missing.

“Bad luck,” Diana tells Steve. He should know that better than most. When he turns a questioning look on her, Diana explains, “Photographs. I rarely pose for them.” She rarely keeps them outside of a lockbox in London. Her memory is difficult enough to contend with. She gestures back toward the hallway. “I prefer my privacy.”

Steve nods and Diana closes the door behind them. Her hands tingle with adrenaline. So much she should be doing. So much she doesn’t understand. Diana follows Steve back toward the kitchen, lingering in the entryway.

“Coffee?” Diana offers. “There might be something in the refrigerator.” She points. Diana winces when Steve opens the door, exposing little more than the light. “I’ll call for delivery before I go.”

The refrigerator door shuts. The freezer opens, blocking the clenched jaw Steve clearly does not want Diana to see.

Sighing, Diana rests her back on the wall, unable to face anything but the balcony. “I’m sorry, Steve.” Diana means it. She tries on an ironic little shrug. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I know.” Steve’s voice is subdued, but he manages to hit that note of humor Diana missed. The freezer door shuts. The cabinet opens. “I know you have important things to do—that I’m—in the way. Like a child. Trailing after you. Pressing buttons.”

“Steve.” Diana angles back toward the kitchen. She hates that she didn’t anticipate this pain, head it off for him.

The silverware drawer rattles. “You were so much better at this than me. You strode down the streets of London with a sword. I have this—” The zipper of his fanny pack squeaks—“ridiculous thing.”

“Steve. Please.” Diana longs to comfort him. She can’t even look at him.

“I know I don’t belong here.”

Diana laughs. Shakes her head against the corner of the entryway. “I don’t either. Steve. You see that I don’t.” As quiet as Charlie in a confessional, Diana says, “And I’ve had a lot more time to adjust.”

The shame of it stings. But telling the truth is its own kind of balm.

Steve leaves her to her quiet. The only sound from the kitchen is the clack of metal on glass.

Curiosity and a moment to compose herself is enough for Diana to come into the kitchen. Steve sits at her table, waiting for her with a smile and a bowl of vanilla ice-cream. He pushes the bowl to the middle of the table and offers her a spoon.

“I should have looked in the freezer first,” he says.

Diana accepts the spoon from Steve, her own smile spreading to match his.

As they share the ice-cream, appreciative noises and clanking spoons and huffs of laughter as they duel for the last bite fill the apartment’s cavernous space.

Diana doesn’t belong in this world. Steve doesn’t belong in this time.

But eyes color of Themysciran waters and fingers caressing that secret spot below her wrist is home enough while they have it.


End file.
